hlovy writes: Nobody ever planned on a short-lived TV series having such a lasting impact on society, but it has. And this is true whether you like Star Trek or not. It doesn't matter that the show's medical devices looked like scavenged pieces of plastic the Desilu studio prop department glued together on a low budget. Star Trek is part of our collective mythology. And in the endless loop of life imitating art, many of the futuristic technologies introduced on the show are now a reality. That's why we decided to compare some of today's medical breakthroughs with those envisioned by science fiction TV writers, producers and actors more than 40 years ago.

So, for our list of four ways real life medicine is catching up with Star Trek, here are the ground rules for all the hardcore Trekkers outthere. We are sticking to The Original Series, where the gadgets, the technology, the basic assumptions of how the future might look are in their most primordial state. Each medical device or medicine was more of an idea, a basic concept of what things should do rather than anything that got too bogged down in actual science. As the later spinoffs got rolling, real science often got in the way of simplytelling the story. Ultimately, the in-depth scientific explanations of the later series will likely turn out to be wrong, while The OriginalSeries will forever retain a colored-plastic purity.